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History of the MBA [MBA Friday Facts]

Did you ever wonder how the MBA started or what the first MBA program was? Well, wonder no more, because our MBA Friday Facts series is back with a brief history of the MBA.

The world's first collegiate school of business is Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, created in 1881.

The first graduate school of management, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, was created in 1900. Creating a graduate school for business was considered a bold move at the time. The first degree Tuck offered was a Master of Science in Commerce.

The first MBA program was founded eight years later at Harvard Business School in 1908. The first class only had 15 faculty members, 33 regular students and 47 special students.

Harvard Business School began admitting women in 1959. The first female Harvard MBA students were graduates of the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration who joined the second year of the Harvard MBA program.